


Arthur's No-Good, Very Bad, Millennium and a Half

by Anidorikildra



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Arthur-centric, Edited again!, Everyone is Dead, Gen, Grief, Implied Suicide Attempt, Let's get real Arthur loved both of them, Slightly different ending, The shipping is slight and ignorable, Will they come back? I think so, because they're DEAD, if that's not your cup of tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:14:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9315041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anidorikildra/pseuds/Anidorikildra
Summary: Stream-of-consciousness-ish musings about Arthur Pendragon and how he would handle immortality in Merlin's place.Now with a slightly different ending and a quick funeral scene because what this needed was more angst, clearly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry to those of you still in this fandom. If you ever want to cry with me over Merlin (character or show) message me. Also, I can't title for shit. Sorry for that too.  
> If anyone wants to expand this, write a companion fic of Camelot face-palming at Arthur from Avalon, or some actual detail about what Arthur was up to for that millennium and a half that I failed to provide, open permission for that as long as I get a mention and also a link! I'd love to read that.

Imagine that somehow, it was Merlin that was mortally wounded at the Battle of Camlann, and not Arthur. Maybe he threw himself in front of Mordred's sword. Maybe he drained himself of magic so severely in the process of saving the day that his body could not recover. The hows do not really matter. What would matter is this: Arthur found out about the magic and Merlin died.

  
Arthur was angry at first. How could Merlin lie to him like this and then die, before there could be any explanation or reconciliation? Later, Arthur will notice that he never thought the word "betray," because even now, he cannot believe it of Merlin. Not after so many years, not after he died for Arthur, the bastard. The Great Dragon did not give Arthur the empty comfort he gave Merlin, in another place and time. He did not promise the eventual return of loved ones. Arthur would never listen to the dragon who once burned his city. Merlin changed the king; Kilgarrah knows, but not that much. 

  
(If only Merlin had told Arthur about Balinor, about dragons who lost everyone and just wanted to share the pain. Arthur might have listened to that.) (After all, he had killed Caerleon for less.) It was almost funny. It was only after Merlin died that his secrets gained the power to harm Arthur. Arthur will never know the joke.

It was Gaius that told Arthur to bury Merlin at the lake. Gaius had only heard about the place from Merlin's stories, but he knew that was the only possible place his ward might find rest. At the funeral, the ring of mourners was smaller than it should have been and Hunith sobbed into Gwen's shoulder. Somehow, watching her weep was harder than setting the little boat adrift. It was easier, though, than firing the arrow that set it aflame.

  
Weeks and then years passed. Gwen bore a child. They named him Nikolas, after absolutely no one they knew, because the castle had enough ghosts. Arthur remembered being small and his father seeing Ygraine when he looked at him. Arthur never wants to make his child feel the way he did then.

  
At night, Arthur told his son about Merlin, the magical guardian of King and Camelot. Magic had been legal since before the new prince was born. The Purge and the hunt for magic-users was only to be the stuff of history lessons for this Pendragon heir.

  
Arthur looked at his son and was proud. His son, unlike Arthur himself, grew up assured of his parents' unconditional love. Maybe the boy would have grown up better with an Uncle Merlin, Arthur thought. But Arthur knew just having Merlin in his own life had made him a better man. Sometimes he remembered the boy he was before Merlin burst into his life and shuddered to think what a father that Arthur would have made. He looked at Gwen and hated to think what sort of husband he would have been, too.

  
More time went by. The creases that appeared around Gwen's eyes when she smiled became permanent. Arthur loved those creases. She looked forever smiling.  
It was on Nikolas's tenth birthday that Arthur realized he could not remember the last time he shaved. He didn’t need to shave. His hair didn't not grow. Gwen had pretended she did not notice all that time. She was the kindest person Arthur had ever known and she loved him. (Merlin would have questioned it, would have demanded answers, would have sought a cure. He loved Arthur too.)

  
Nikolas turned twenty-five. Arthur could have passed for his brother. Gwen ceased ignoring the problem when Arthur noticed it. Instead, she became vocal in how little she cared. But Arthur saw her self-consciousness. She thought "I look old next to him." Arthur didn’t see her age. To him, Gwen looked as wonderful as ever. She looked natural and right where he did not.

  
Arthur’s subjects had not feared magic in years, and so they whispered about how their king was blessed. A legend built up about a king who so loved his nation that not Time itself could not rend him from it. Arthur felt afraid. Though he was still young and strong, he stepped aside for Nikolas to rule when he was old enough. Nikolas said he was not ready enough, but Arthur felt that was good. If Nikolas had felt ready, he would not have been. Arthur became an advisor to his son and occasionally, served as his best knight. 

  
Fast forward. You can guess what happens between then and now. Arthur buried his elderly wife, then his son, and so on.

  
After the deaths of his great-great-grandchildren, Arthur could no longer bear it. He watched his descendants from a distance from then on. Arthur was like a fairy godfather. He showed up in their lives when they were most in need of aid. Arthur took a flexible definition of “need,” of course. This man could never separate himself completely. He showed up to give courting advice to the teens, and desserts to cheer up the little ones, and played strategian when asked. He loved all his descendants. He loved them too much to watch them wither up close.

  
After the last of his line passed, three centuries after Nikolas was buried, Arthur went into seclusion for a few decades. He patrolled the borders of Camelot while a distant cousin-in-law of Arthur’s last great-granddaughter sat on the throne. Arthur knew he had nothing to fear of bandits or monsters. A moment of grief after the death of Nikolas had taught Arthur that it was not only Time that hid from him, but also Death. 

(Way back then, Nikolas's daughter had found him and the shame of it prevented another attempt for quite some time.)

  
So Arthur patrolled alone. He defended travelers from beasts and spoke wise words to settle disputes in villages. On a whim, after remembering Merlin's words about how he would not survive as a peasant, Arthur started helping farmers bring in the harvest. The first autumn, he was clueless and had to be shown how to do everything. Arthur made a point to never return to a village in living memory, always somewhere new each fall. Arthur wasn’t ready to make friends. (He made them anyway and cursed himself for not being able to let them go.)

  
The land that was once Arthur's fell to war over and over. He tried to stop it, and when that failed, he tried to mitigate damage. But he was only one man, immortal or no. He wasn’t a king anymore and had no power to stop the bloodshed. And he never got the hang of medicine. Centuries dragged by. Arthur read every translation of Le Morte d'Arthur there was and he never stopped laughing at the irony. Oh, Merlin. If only it were that simple.

  
Arthur used different names and still tried to avoid making friends. No one could replace his knights. No one could replace Merlin. But Arthur came to find that some people could take up new spaces and ease his loneliness. He met loud buffoons and clever scholars and sly women who declared his faults on his many travels. Sometimes, he would see ghosts in these new people. But more often Arthur saw them as they were, and he loved them for being so unabashedly themselves. (And oh, oh, the holes these new friends left behind.)

  
Magic died out and became fairy-tale. Arthur wondered sometimes if Merlin could have prevented that. Arthur wondered what else Merlin could have done in Arthur's place if he had lived instead.

  
In the twentieth century, the bombs over the trenches made Arthur afraid in a way he had not been in centuries. When they crash to the ground, Arthur got images behind his eyelids of dragon-fire in Camelot. More than that, Arthur knew what it was to regrow limbs. He could not imagine many things worse than feeling new skin and bone shooting out of still-healing burns. Physically worse, anyway. Arthur used the name Leon during this time. He remembered his steadfast friend and he vowed not to abandon these children playing war to their fates. (Everyone was a child to Arthur, by that point.)

  
After the First World War, Arthur moved to New York. He liked the idea of it and honestly, after centuries of the same island, he was ready for new sights, no matter how it hurt to leave the land he had tried to defend for so long. And it hurt. Somehow, the land kept trying to pull him back. In the twenties, Arthur received calls with lucrative job offers in England, despite having never applied. During the thirties, European newspapers detailing the Great Slump in England ended up on his doorstep, despite the fact he never subscribed. Those tugged at his heart and tempted him to go back, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Three days after he chose a new identity in 1942, the number for the birthday he invented came up for the draft. It was just as well. Arthur could not bear to hear more about the bombs raining on London anyway. When the war was over, he did not even bother trying to go back to America. It seemed he was bound to the land. 

  
Arthur is not Merlin. He does not know to watch the lake and he does not know that his is a temporary eternity. But that’s another story.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are love.


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